


Mourning Braids

by Saraste



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: (death not overly graphic or depicted in detail), Braids, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Gigolas Week 3, Grief, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 17:13:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5383748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gimli is supposed to be writing in his Mourning Braids in the wake of his husbands death.</p>
<p>Gigolas week Day 8: “I always thought I was supposed to go first”.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning Braids

 

Gimli wakes. He lies still, eyes closed, listening to another's breathing beside him, hoping… But there is no other breath, as there has not been. But in the mornings he lets himself hope for the impossible in, if just for a moment. Because the grief, as he remembers, as he makes himself remember, is always almost too much. Once he gets up he goes through the motions of preparing for the new day but finds no joy inthem. They are still done, for he has promised to not let himself go, to be less than who he was. Even when that is impossible, now that half of him has been chopped off.

 

He resolutely does _not_ look at the emptiness on the other side of the bed, the bedding which has not been disturbed once it was smoothed down by long fingers, at the items still laid out on the small table beside it.

 

_Elven things_.

 

But Dwarven things also, some pretty little trinkets on a silver tray, beads and clasps, a comb adorned with leaves interwoven around the Durin crest… just laying there, never to be used in this or any other life. Never to be disturbed for they are relics of a life now gone. Mementoes of mornings when Gimli woke to tickling fingers, a fall of pale hair over his face and a grinning mouth kissing his own.

 

Gimli _does not look_.

 

For he cannot.

 

Even when it might be better if he did. If he remembered what had been and cherished _that_ instead of what he no longer does not have, cherished the memories which are all that are left for him now, all that he can cling to.

 

For his Love has passed to where Gimli cannot reach them, beyond all sorrow and toil, beyond the mortal realms. Through the veil of death, through which there is no return.

 

There is no comfort for Gimli son of Glóin in the idea of the two of them meeting in the Second Song, at least not yet. For his wound is still too fresh, the sorrow still too deep. The grief is still gnawing at him like a trickle of water in the crack of a rock, slowly eating away at him until, one day, he will come apart and crack altogether and be beyond repair.

 

Gimli's fingers falter as they touch his hair to braid it. He closes his eyes and weeps at the memory of days past, of long fingers combing through it and gently twisting and twining it first into courtship braids and then marriage braids. His fingers shake as he forces himself to undo the braids put in by now dead hands, or at least he tries. In the end he cannot make himself do it, cannot do it. Even when he ought to.

 

Not yet, he tells himself as he dresses up for the day, letting his hair be. None will comment, for it would be akin a fist to one's face to do so, this soon after…

 

Gimli splashes cold water on his face and dries it, taking some sort of comfort in the mundane gesture of neatly hanging the towel back in it's place. His eyes do not focus on the neat stitching at the edges and shy away from a memory of an Elf humming softly in Sindarin while nimble fingers moved a delicate needle through fabric and forest bright eyes spoke volumes.

 

At the door Gimli takes a deep breath and sets his face into an expression of stoic endurance, of bravely borne mourning. It is more likely nearer to a grimace but there are some things that even the strongest of Dwarves are expected to manage without grieving and showing that grief. Not when they have been bereft of their One.

 

How Gimli looks on his face does not matter, either, for everyone knows already what it is, who it is, whom he has lost. And his kin will not look to his face but his braids. For while he has braided in Mourning braids, the complex set of his interwoven Spouse and Marriage braids have not been re-braided to reflect his status as a widower. For he has not had the strength yet to unravel the braids which Legolas wove into his hair with a laugh in his voice and eyes, pressing a kiss to Gimli's cheek when he had been done, whispering a profanity to his ear.

 

He had been cold and lifeless before sundown.

 

His lips had been bloodied when Gimli had been beside him, pressing a cloth, hard and yet not hard enough for there was blood, too much, so much, against his wound and there had been a ghost of a smile on them.

 

'Meleth, do not grieve too much,' was what Legolas had told him.

 

Gimli had begged him to stay. His Elf could not, even when he would have. He had shuddered with mortal fear of death on his face and had died with Gimli's Dark name on his lips.

 

'I always thought it would be me leaving you behind,' Gimli had whispered to his lifeless body, gently closing his staring eyes, the forest green of which had turned to ash. .

 

And so he could not do his Mourning braids, for he remembers how the last thing still in existence that his husband did with his pretty fingers were his braids and he cannot forget the sight of broken and beaten fingers and the feel of them stilling in his own.

 

Another day, but not today.

 

 

 


End file.
